IDF Day 2: Renee James: "Developing for the Future of Computing"

Article Index:

IDF Day 2: Renee James: "Developing for the Future of Computing"

In the final IDF keynote address on Wednesday, Vice President and General Manager for Software and Solutions at Intel, Renee James, spoke about the "digital revolution" and what sort of opportunities the recent advances in Intel technology will enable.

Just as the Pentium processor helped shepherd in multimedia on the PC, multi-core processors are opening the door further for HD and 3D worlds on computers. James stated that all of Intel's platforms will be multi-core by 2010.

As an example of the kind of real-world, immersive environment recent processor improvements are enabling, James showed a preview of Ubisoft's FarCry 2, which is due out this November. In addition to a completely interactive, immersive and realistic-looking world, the game uses the Havok engine for CPU-based physics. Another example of applications enabled by technological advances, is a solution from Philips Healthcare that captures nearly real-time 3D images of a beating heart. James claims that this non-invasive procedure represents a revolution in medical treatment.

What enables both of these highly computational solutions is that they benefit from the presence of additional cores and Hyper-Threading support, because both applications support parallel programming (both apps are threaded). To help developers port existing apps to multi-core as well as to write new applications that can also take advantage of multiple cores, yesterday Intel announced the Intel Parallel Studio--a comprehensive set of tools for multi-core software development. The software will be available in November as a beta. James also mentioned that the same toolset will be available for Larrabee and Visual Computing.

A few weeks ago, Intel announced a partnership with DreamWorks Animation SKG, where Intel would supply DreamWorks with an Intel-based infrastructure in order to render 3D animations quicker and at higher quality. Yesterday, Intel unveiled the name of DreamWorks' new 3D animation technology: InTru3D.